


Every Low Heart

by draculard



Category: American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Depression, F/M, Ghosts, Murder-Suicide, Self Harm, eating disorders mentioned, school shooting mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Violet's met Tate more times than she cares to remember.





	Every Low Heart

She sees him for the first time in the school library reading a little book of Chinese poems, translated into English. When she circles around the shelves behind him, she can just make out a verse on the yellowed page:

 _I believe my audience_   
_—_ _The sky, and_   
_The waterdrops splashing over the sea_   
_They will cover up everything of mine_   
_And that unsearchable_ _  
Grave._

“Gu Cheng,” the boy says, showing her the cover. His head is tilted back, blond hair falling over the plastic edge of his chair. Violet’s eyes flick to his — so startlingly dark — and then away. She runs her fingers over the spine of the nearest book (Virginia Woolf’s Diaries; ugh) and pretends she’s looking for something specific.

“You like poetry?” the boy asks. He’s talking loudly, with no fear of the librarian. She glances back at him; the sweater he wears is overlarge and ragged, and she thinks, perhaps uncharitably, that he probably bought it that way because he thinks it looks cool. Poverty is so chic in California.

“You’d like this guy,” the boy says decisively, finally looking away. “He killed his wife with an ax and hanged himself, you know. Back in ninety-three.”

He glances up, waiting for an answer, but Violet is already walking away.

* * *

She meets a boy who has a VHS collection of movies Violet’s never heard of in his room. VHS — who has VHS these days? She didn’t realize it was something people collected, even ironically. Yet there they are, a whole stack of them on his windowsill, spines facing the sun. 

She should’ve known he was eccentric. The first thing she does when she enters the room is look at his bookshelves, and everything she sees there paints one very specific picture.

Old paperback copies of Kafka, Heinrich Boll, Jean-Paul Sartre, Osamu Dazai, Gunter Grass and Yukio Mishima. She looks at his wild eyes and the thick sweater he’s wearing even though it’s eighty degrees outside and thinks,

_Of course. He likes to torture himself._

He probably loves how shitty VHS looks on an old TV screen. He probably forces himself to read those dense, dry books and tells himself they’re his favorite, just like Violet tells herself when she reads Camus. 

He probably lights matches at night and puts them out on his own skin.

He probably has razor blades hidden in a tin somewhere, right under Violet’s nose — there, that tin on the desk by his tapes — or there, that nondescript little box on the shelf next to Faulkner. But whatever he likes, he’s smiling at her, hair tousled, eyes tugging her in.

“You like Nick Cave?” he asks. “Or, no — I bet you’re a Leonard Cohen type of girl.”

Violet should go, but she stays.

* * *

It feels so strange when he kisses her.

It feels like nothing’s there.

* * *

They built a memorial in the ‘90s, for some kids who died in a shooting which, unlike Columbine, never made national news. There are six obelisks sitting there in a circle, one vandalized — the shooter’s, Violet guesses. It’s been pushed over; someone’s taken a sledgehammer to it, leaving broken chunks of concrete on the ground. It’s been spray-painted. It’s probably been pissed on.

She takes a seat on in and lights a cigarette.

This is where she meets him, though he’s nothing but a voice in her ear. A boy who whispers, _Violet, I think we’ve met before._

She feels breath on her neck but feels nothing when she lays a palm flat against her own skin. Must be the wind. It’s abnormally chilly here in the evenings, under the trees.

 _We’ve met before,_ he whispers.

_In your house._

_In my house._

_On the beach._

_At school._

She sighs through her nose, legs crossed, staring into the distance. She takes a drag on her cigarette. She wonders what name was engraved on this obelisk before somebody defaced it. 

Did he smoke? The boy whispering to her, or the shooter, or the victims whose memorials are still unstained? She’s sure he did. All the cool kids smoked back then.

 _You like Camus?_ the voice asks her. _I saw you reading him. I like him, too._

And he proves it to her. 

He says: _Open yourself to the gentle indifference of the world._

He says: _You only have a little time left, Violet. And you don’t want to waste it on God._

He says: _If something is going to happen to you, don’t you want to be there?_

* * *

She dreams of a boy she’s seen a million times before with his ripped sweater and his wild blond hair, and she knows he’s got a gun in his hand because she can feel the cold steel pressed against her throat, even though she can’t see it.

 _I’ll kill you if you kill me,_ he says. He’s smiling.

She wakes up with gunpowder burns on her hands.

* * *

They meet outside the bookstore, when Violet is angry at her parents, when she hasn’t slept in days, when she hasn’t eaten anything and doesn’t plan to. Vivian and Ben don’t know where she is, and it’s dark out, and she’s been walking for hours because it gives her an opportunity to smoke.

She doesn’t mean to end up at the bookstore. It’s just that it’s the only place still open in the mall, and she wants to sit down. Once there, she finds herself in the little section at the back where illiterates can buy DVDs and vinyl records.

Vinyl records: that’s another thing Violet doesn’t quite get, just like VHS. Who has the room for a vinyl collection? Who has the money? Why waste your cash on records when you can rip it from YouTube for free?

But then she sees a familiar name flashing at her from the wall of records, and for just a second she sees a boy in a ratty green sweater thumbing through the rows.

Nick Cave. She’s seen that name before, right? She can even hear the faintest snatch of a song in her head.

She turns away from the records. She scans the bookshelves instead and finds a thick book full of Japanese death haikus, and a book called _Teenage Suicide Notes,_ and another one stuffed with photocopies from Kurt Cobain’s journal, his handwriting messy and frequently scratched out.

When she’s looking through it, she hears whistling, and that song comes right back to her, almost like someone is singing it in her ear.

 _On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow_   
_And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief_   
_As I kissed her goodbye, I said, ‘All beauty must die’_ _  
And leant down and planted a rose between her teeth._

Where does it come from? Where has she heard it before?

* * *

The boy says, “You shouldn’t be out here so late. There’s dangerous people around.”

But it’s just the two of them in the alley behind the bookstore, Violet smoking, the streetlights illuminating Tate’s skin. He has razor blades in his hand; he keeps them in his wallet, tucked behind his license at all times.

“What are you going to do?” Violet asks, but it’s a stupid question. He’s rolled up his sleeve, exposing a blank space on his inner arm where he’s never cut before.

“Pick a word for me,” he says. “And I’ll write it.”

She says nothing. He kisses her, and all she can taste is smoke.

“Pick a word,” he says. “I’ll pick one for you.”

 _Write it,_ he said. “On your skin?” Violet asks.

“Yes,” he says.

“And you want me to write one, too? On my skin?”

“Anywhere you like,” says Tate. “On your wrist. On your thigh.” He leans forward, kisses her again, so softly and gently she can almost feel it. “On your lips.”

She takes the razor blade. It’s cool still, even though he was just holding it, and it quickly warms to her hand.

“Okay,” she says, tracing her finger down the edge. “Give me my word.”

“Howl,” he says, with a wolf’s smile. “Howl, you know? Like Allen Ginsberg?”

“Destroyed by madness,” Violet whispers, her lips too close to his. “Starving hysterical naked. Dragging themselves through the streets.”

He lowers his face into the crook of her neck; she can feel his smile against her skin.

“I knew you’d get it,” he says. “And my word?”

She puts her fingers in his hair. Tangled and soft, just as she imagined it. He’s cold against her, but he isn’t shivering.

“Ghost,” she says.

* * *

The next time she sees him, the word HOWL is still visible just below her panty-line, the letters raised and all-too-visible against the whiteness of her thigh.

She kisses him; she pulls his sleeve back.

His skin is blank.

There’s nothing there.


End file.
